There are currently two different ways to load the tool. One way will show the lifespans for three generations from the root person in an ancestor tree, the other will not. It is planned that this option will be moved to a configuration menu, and only one url will be necessary.

In both cases, by default it will load a random family tree from a number of "Famous People" sample trees. You can then choose to upload your own family tree that is in a gedcom file, or simply explore the samples.

Moving your mouse over the nodes will bring up a informational popup for that person.If you click the node, the popup
will stay open and can be dragged around with your mouse, and there will be a
few more options available in the popup.

In addition, the path from the root person to that person is highlighted, and the nodes for
all other ancestors at the same level are highlighted by enlarging the nodes slightly.

If the person is deceased, the "lifespan" displayed will show a rectangle indicating the lifespan of the individual.
As you move the mouse over the rectangle, it will display how old that person was in the year that reflects where the
mouse is (there is a long horizontal line that moves with the mouse). The estimated lifespans are based on mortality tables.

As you move the mouse
over the rectangle for the lifespan, the viz will display how old that person was in the year that reflects where the
mouse is

If the person is still alive, then as you move the mouse
over the rectangle in the future, the viz will display how old that
person will be in that year, as well as
the probability that the person will live that long.

How is one person in the tree related to another person in the tree? For descendant trees, you can see.
The steps to do this are shown in the screenshot below. For trees with lots of pedigree collapse, two people can be related in various ways, and these will be shown with the tool.

Step 1 for viewing relationship between any two people in the tree

Now when you mouseover anyone else in the tree, the popup will include the relationship to the "Relationship Relative" chosen in Step 1

The video below demonstrates how to easily navigate ANY of the people in the currently
loaded GEDCOM file (including searching by name). You can also quickly change to the ancestor/descendant tree for people
that are in the GEDCOM file but not in the currently displayed ancestor/descendant treethis way.

As far as I know, you can export a GEDCOM file of your tree from any of the common family tree software and web sites (e.g., Ancestry.com). The details on how
to do this will depend on which tool you are using. Please feel free to contact me at bradflyon@gmail.com if you are having problems with that step, and I will see if I can help.

12 comments:

Does the way of privatizing living people done by changing the birth year? I am root person and my birth year is out by 6 years even though it is correct in my tree. Also the Family Tree Viz said there were birth years for only 187 of the 7000 people in my tree. Whereas there are actually far more. Is this because of US date format or something like that? I use UK/ Australian format dd MMM YYYY

Does it indicate that your birth year was approximated? It would be noted in the popup you see when you mouse over the node.

There might be some issue with parsing the date. If you have an anonymized version of the tree I will take a look in case there's something I haven't seen before and need to make sure and be able to address.

Brad,Great tool :) Thanks! I saw it demonstrated at the recent I4GG conference in San Diego and when I tried it on my own family, found some issues with Family Tree Maker GED file exports that I have fixed so that it works correctly now.Very helpful and fascinating display that shows what I already knew and a few things I had not caught before :) Barbara --Barbara Taylor: Instructor, DNA AdoptionFinding your family through DNA: Many resources and online classes at http://www.dnaadoption.comHow to Use the AncestryDNA Helper - http://www.itstime.com/AncestryDNAHelper.htm

btw, just today I added some additional stuff for data validation checking you might find useful sometime. The validation will be done and be available when you load your GEDCOM (or at any other time under the Options menu). Please feel free to let me know of other validation additional checks that might be useful.